Foraging for food builds bond with nature

Michele Genest is the Whitehorse-based author of The Boreal Gourmet (Harbour Publishing, 2010) — part memoir, part cookbook about exploring the North and cooking with its bounty of food.Photo by
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Foraging for food on city streets doesn’t seem like an ordinary thing to do, but for someone like Michele Genest, it's a welcome activity, particularly if there are berries involved.

Genest is the Whitehorse-based author of The Boreal Gourmet (Harbour Publishing, 2010) — part memoir, part cookbook about exploring the North and cooking with its bounty of food. Yes, there is a bounty of food in the North. That's where the foraging comes into play.

"Foraging is a great way, in the spring and fall, to get out into the bush and just experience it. And feed yourself at the same time," Genest says.

At the heart of northern cuisine for Genest, and most northerners, is the foraging known as berry picking. Berries grown in such a harsh climate are precious, and so the experience of picking them is something to share — as First Nations and western cultures often do — as are the berries themselves.

In fact, it was an invitation to go picking that sparked Genest’s love affair with the North and its cuisine.

"When berry picking, the social, spiritual and psychic value of the berries come together," she says.

Those intense weeks when the berries are ripe and ready are filled with picnics and picking, as the entire community unites in the effort to capture those fleeting moments of colour and taste. People work hard to gather the bounty, sharing the effort, the experience and the result in frozen berries, jams and jellies — all bursts of sunshine in the winter months.

This focus on gathered ingredients, knowing your local environment and the people who live there, and experimenting in the kitchen are at the heart of The Boreal Gourmet. The book grew out of long afternoons in the kitchen with friends. Genest describes it as "cooking with food that is intimately connected to your landscape."

Whitehorse is not Genest’s hometown. She’s a Toronto girl who also spent three years in Greece. While there, she lived and cooked on an island where the desire to eat local was ingrained and not part of a social movement. She arrived in Whitehorse in 1994.

"I have no intention of leaving," she says. "It is a great place to live. There is a frontier and homesteading mentality combined with a population that travels quite a bit."

That mix, with a strong Asian and southeast Asian immigrant population, inspires a lot of the recipes in The Boreal Gourmet.

While the dishes highlight ingredients found in and around Whitehorse and the Yukon — including big-game meats, fish and numerous berries — the flavours are global, with spices that evoke crowded markets and flavours that remind you of the tropics. This blend of the global and local reflects modern life in the North.

By acknowledging global influences while still respecting local opportunities, Genest says, you can create a cuisine and cooking experience that’s both grounded and varied.

She strongly encourages adapting her recipes for local meat — if you don’t happen to have a freezer filled with moose, for example, simply try beef or bison. This flexibility moves The Boreal Gourmet beyond a book with regional appeal, a fact reflected in its current position on the shortlist for the Canadian Cookbook Awards.

RECIPE

Middle Eastern Moose with Spinach and Dried Fruit

This recipe comes from Michele Genest's The Boreal Gourmet, reprinted here courtesy of the publisher, Harbour Publishing. Genest adapted it from Joy of Cooking's simple "Casseroled Beef with Fruit." She prefers it with moose, as the fruit and spices work in counterpoint to the mild gaminess of the meat, and the spinach adds a strong, earthy note. In the absence of moose, however, she says beef or bison are more than adequate, venison would be great and so would lamb or goat.

For the marinade, combine spices and rub into the meat. Whisk wine and oil, add garlic and stir into meat, mixing well. Cover and marinate overnight in the fridge.

Take the moose out an hour before you’re ready to cook and let warm to room temperature. Just before adding meat to the casserole to brown, drain the meat, pat dry and discard the marinade. While the moose is coming to room temperature, prepare the dried fruit. Chop the dried fruit into pieces the size of a nickel, then combine with stock and lemon and soak until soft, about an hour.

Next, assemble the stew. Heat the oil and butter in a heavy-bottomed, ovenproof casserole over medium-low heat. Add the moose meat in batches and saute briefly until browned. Remove each batch as it is done and reserve on the side.

When the meat is all browned, add onion to the casserole, adding more oil if necessary, and saute until softened. Add garlic, saute another couple of minutes, then add spices and stir so that the onion and garlic are thoroughly coated.

Preheat the oven to 300 F (150 C). Add the meat back to the casserole along with the fruit and stock mixture. Bring to a simmer, cover and place in the oven.

Cook, covered, for 2 1/2 hours. Periodically make sure liquid has not evaporated; if necessary, add more stock or a splash of wine, just enough to produce a small amount of broth but not so much that the meat and fruit swim. (The spinach will add more liquid.)

Add spinach and cook for another half-hour and remove from oven. There should be just enough sauce to hold the stew loosely together, but if not, add another splash of red wine, stir and let cook over medium-low for a couple of minutes.

Serve with quinoa, bulgur or couscous (beware the packaged kind! Make sure it’s not rancid) flavoured with saffron butter.

Makes six to eight servings.

Saffron Butter

For each 1 cup (250 mL) rice use 1 tbsp. (15 mL) butter and 2 or 3 threads of saffron. Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat, add saffron, cook for a couple of minutes, pour over rice and mix well, fluffing with a fork.

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